A memorial for Oakland Tribune reporter, educator who did not want a memorial

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Oakland Tribune police reporter Harry Harris delivers a tribute to his former colleague, the late Paul Grabowicz, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, at International House in Berkeley, Calif. Grabowicz, who went on to teach journalism at the University of California's graduate school, died of cancer on Dec. 24, 2015. (Photo by D. Ross Cameron)

The audience gathers at a memorial for the late Paul Grabowicz, a former reporter for the Oakland Tribune and a professor at the University of California Graduate School of Journalism, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, at International House in Berkeley, Calif. Grabowicz died of cancer on Dec. 24, 2015. (Photo by D. Ross Cameron)

BERKELEY — An auditorium full of people who knew Paul Grabowicz knew the former Oakland Tribune reporter and UC Berkeley journalism professor would have had choice words for the memorial they held for him on the university’s campus Saturday.

He had said he never wanted one. Yet a few hundred packed the Chevron Auditorium at the International House on Saturday for a memorial befitting the curmudgeon they adored.

Longtime friends, former newspaper colleagues and students measured their memories of “Grabs” with the gush he was known to dislike and the salty, direct language that colored his long career as an investigative reporter and distinguished professor.

“We know Berkeley is the birthplace of free speech, and no one’s speech was freer than Paul’s,” former Tribune colleague Kate Coleman said.

Grabowicz died of cancer on Dec. 24 at his Pleasant Hill home at the age of 66. He is survived by his wife, Anne.

Grabowicz worked for the Oakland Tribune for 20 years before he joined the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism in 1995 and founded its pioneering New Media Program.

At the Tribune, Grabowicz was remembered as a fearless reporter who kept meticulous files on the figures he investigated, and for years he could be seen outside the Tribune’s downtown office with a cigarette in one hand and notes in the other and, after hours, at the Ringside bar next door holding court with other newspapermen.

She and Grabowicz worked as a two-person investigative team who after the Loma Prieta Earthquake exposed a geologist whose expert advice was used by developers to build homes, day care centers and schools along dangerous fault lines in the East Bay. After the story was published, the geologist lost his license to work in California, she said.

“He held himself and others to a high standard and had a built-in (expletive) detector,” Newbergh said of Grabowicz.

At UC Berkeley, he was known as an early champion of digital news while maintaining his old-school journalism values. Edward Wasserman, the dean of the journalism school, said the department’s mission “reflects his influence more than it does the influence of any other single individual.”

“Heaven knows he loved his students,” Wasserman said. “He would do whatever he could for them.”

Despite his gruff exterior, Grabowicz had a softer side. Coleman recalled the look in Grabowicz’s eyes and his loss of words when he first met his future wife, Ann, who worked in the Tribune’s marketing office. On another night at the Ringside bar, he rescued her from another reporter she wasn’t interested in, which began their 33-year “love affair” and marriage, Coleman said.

“For three years, he delivered a single long-stem rose to her office every week,” she said. “He was the world’s best curmudgeon, or at least the world’s best actor playing a curmudgeon.”

David DeBolt is a reporter for the Bay Area News Group who covers Oakland. DeBolt grew up in the Bay Area and has worked for daily newspapers in Palo Alto, Fairfield and Walnut Creek. He joined the organization in 2012.

What came of her inquiries, her wish to remember, was published Saturday morning on NPR's "Only a Game": a story about her father's unlikely friendship with NBA star Charles Barkley – one she and her family had dismissed as far-fetched until Barkley appeared at Lin Wang's funeral.

Andrew Black was a blond-haired and wide-grinning 23-year-old from Vermont. He loved hiking the Green Mountain Trails, the NHL's Montreal Canadiens and brewing his own beer. He had been stirring together ingredients for his own brews since before he was old enough to legally drink.